Partly. Might-T-Force is one of the premier hero teams in the “PS238” ‘verse, along with the Earth Defense League and the Power Partners. Having to take on someone as inexperienced as Forak, not to mention someone with “meta-centric” views, is going to make them look bad. One of the favorite past times of the more mischevous super villains in comic books is to try to turn the public against superheroes. (See: Luthor, Lexington; Edge, Morgan; Godfrey, G. Gordon; Osborn, Norman; Helmut, Thirteenth Baron Zemo; Fisk, Wilson; Octavius, Dr. Otto; and The Magus, No First Name, No Middle Initial.) Not to mention politicians, military personnel, police officers, media and ordinary people with grudges who don’t like superheroes. (See Gyrich, Agent Henry Peter; Hill, Acting S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Maria; Jameson, Mayor J. Jonah; Bullock, Harvey; Ross, General (four star) Thadeus; Durvin, Senator Walter.)

If word got out that Might-T-Force was not only training Atlas’ replacement, but that he was an inexperienced bigot, their popularity would plummet, giving their Rogues’ Gallery a perfect opportunity to launch a smear campaign, complete with a media shill on a conservative news network, paranoid conspiracy bloggers, a Twitter blast, and a ninja-robot attack during Might-T-Force’s obligatory press conference to address the issue. Might-T-Force can’t deal with the bad press, or the increase to their insurance premiums from any “accidents” Forak may cause.

(Also the armored hero seated across from Forak probably doesn’t have actual powers, only gadgets, armor and martial arts training. He is a “softling” and isn’t thrilled about the non-chalant way Forak is insulting him. Note also the way the muscular African-American woman standing behind the seated armored hero is staring at Forak with pursed lips. She doesn’t strike me as someone who will tolerate casual bigotry, especially from a noob like Forak.)

Spider-Man’s seemingly never ending battles with unpopularity; the Avengers’ occaisional PR nightmares (often orchestrated by villains); the X-Men’s dedication to letting former villains like Magneto, Rogue, Mystique, Toad, Sabretooth, the Juggernaut and Danger into their ranks without considering the way the public will react, are lessons for all fictional superteams. Compared to villains with good publicity like Lex Luthor (or good attorneys and hitmen like Norman Osborn and Wilson Fisk), heroes often have to take unpopular actions for the greater good.

Taking on an unpopular new team member can be a good thing, even at the cost of bad press. For example, the second incarnation of the Avengers, “Cap’s Kooky Quartet”, was made up of Captain America and three reformed criminals: Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch. This wasn’t popular with the public, but Cap defended giving them a chance to make amends for their actions, rather than send them to prison and risk their continuing to commit crimes or acts of terrorism. In fact the Avengers have one of the best track records when it comes to reducing supervillain recidivism, often by recruiting criminals into their ranks and helping them reform. But just as often the Avengers are targeted for character assassination by enemies with access to the media or corporate holdings.

The X-men’s track record for villain recidivism is not nearly as flawless; with the exceptions of Banshee, Rogue, Gambit, Toad and Northstar, every other villain recruited into the X-Men has lapsed back into terrorism, petty crime or serial killing. (Plus Northstar’s rehabilitation from being a terrorist was accomplished by Alpha Flight, so I’m not sure that even counts. And the Toad is very close to quitting his job as janitor for Wolverine’s school and becoming a supervillain again.) Combined with the outright racism Mutants face, the X-Men seem to have developed two schools of thought on bad PR: 1) ignore it and hope it goes away; 2) make it worse using the Scott Summers playbook, then turn the bad PR into an asset, also using the Scott Summers playbook.

How would any of Might-T-Force’s members have met Dax? He came to Earth and left with Ul-Ron and the kids the same day. Even if she were one of the adult heroes who showed up to fight Dax, none of them spoke to him after Ul-Ron defused the situation.

And now you see why I said what I said. Sure the children are skilled and the grown ups are even more skilled. It’s just his society and partly him has a very low… view of people who do not have the power package and even less if they are a normal.

Forgive me if I seem obnoxious, but doesn’t this seem like sort of a … strained reason?

Surely if a noble established hero were to find this disregard for life, their reaction wouldn’t be “well then I won’t train you”, right? I would think this sort of thing would mean more training is necessary. I can see some distrust due to this particular cultural difference, but not a rejection. After all, with less training he’s MORE dangerous. Under tutelage the established hero could watch and direct him to be more noble.

Forak didn’t approach Might-T-Force and ask to join them; the US Government (the Department of Defense and the Department of Metahuman Affairs) approached them and asked them to train Forak to be the new Atlas. Not just any hero, but a legacy hero to one of America’s premier icons, next to Freedom Fighter. In exchange, the government probably offered them funding. Rather than take Forak on sight unseen, two members of Might-T-Force interviewed him. They discovered he was lazy, bigoted, had zero work ethic, had no interest in helping others and was weaker than the average F.I.S.S. Given all of those factors, Might-T-Force were not willing to put their reputations at risk for a few million dollars of government aid. (They probably make that much in a week from toy revenue.) I imagine Forak gave an equally poor showing to the Earth Defense League and the Power Partners.

Also, its not like there aren’t other jobs for metas in the “PS238” ‘verse that don’t involve being a superhero. (See issue #23, “Career Day”) The thing is that Forak has no means of support at the moment other than the US Government, who want him to be the new Atlas. Might-T-Force, the EDL and the Power Partners are entitled to tell them to find someone else to hold Forak’s hand.

@Tamar: Forak is actually wearing a revised version of Ul-Ron’s original costume. I guess the government handlers for “Atlas” decided to have a bit of a makeover if they were unveiling “Atlas 2.0” anyway.

He could potentially turn into a pretty bad supervillain, not because he won’t understand our society, but because once he does he may decide to take advantage of being higher up on the power scale here than he is on Argos.

The irony of the government’s decision to tap Forak to replace Ul-Ron as “Atlas” is that there are probably a dozen F.I.S.S.’s native to Earth who are far more qualified to assume the mantle of “Atlas”.

Yes, but they’re not actual ALIENS! It’s like a gimmick. Normal FISS are boring, alien FISS, at a time where everyone will no doubt be interested in them (Last of his kind? Not really, there’s a whole planet of them) are exciting!
Of course, they could get someone to lie, but that never works out.
Anyway, he’s young. Forak may grow out of his bigotry (with a little help from 84 and the rest of earth), as he realises that while softlings are, to be honest, squishy, rather pathetic and pretty replaceable, we still have value as people! Not much, but some!

@Jerden: The fact that Ul-Ron was an alien who was raised on Earth (in the American heartland, no less) is why he was so popular, compared to the Earthborn F.I.S.S.’s. It didn’t hurt that he was so powerful, was genuinely likeable or dating Lisa Larsen.

But Forak has none of Ul-Ron’s qualities. He’s not really powerful (Julie is stronger, tougher and faster than he is); he was banished to Earth for incompetence (and people will find out sooner or later), not raised on Earth; he’s a lazy, easily bored Otaku, who has never been a hero before (and is slightly bigoted to boot); and I doubt he could get a Lucy Lane expy to give him the time of day, let alone a Lois Lane expy. And yet he’s getting the job. It’s a good thing too, since there aren’t many other ways for Forak to support himself.

84, being technically both an alien and a FISS, is the ideal teacher, since she qualifies as one of his overlords. He’ll just have to get used to taking orders from a young girl. They can work on his taking orders from softlings later.